


Sisters in each others' arms

by zungenleid



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Pre-Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3201227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zungenleid/pseuds/zungenleid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy needs help with delicate work and goes to Angie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sisters in each others' arms

* * *

 

Title taken from Billy Brag’s “Tender Comrade”

Beta by the amazing [kamelientee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kamelientee/pseuds/kamelientee). I am sorry for driving you mad with my weird tenses, honey.

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, sadly.

Also, this was written after the second episode and before the third one, so keep that in mind.

Written for the **de-bingo Prompt “Körper/Gesicht schminken** – putting make up on someone’s body/face”

 

* * *

 

It is half past six in the morning and Peggy is standing in front of Angie’s apartment door with her shoes in one hand and a red lipstick in the other.

All in all this has been a terrible night so far, followed by an equally terrible morning. She has lost not only one but two very promising witnesses against one of the business rivals who are still telling lies about Howard. She has also had to discredit Daniel’s hard work in front of Dooley. And all that just so they wouldn’t find out that Peggy had spent the last three nights in the sewers under the very bank the robbery of which she was absolutely not supposed to investigate.

She has also taken a knife to her right arm and her last white blouse is now a dirty little rag in a trash can on the East Side.

Peggy bites back a moan, as she slowly lifts her hand and awkwardly whams her shoes against the door.

She can barely move. This is a terrible idea, she thinks, but just as she is about to crawl back into her own room, the door swings slowly, carefully open. Angie – complete with tousle-head and a blue and white dressing gown – is behind it, staring sleepily at Peggy.

“Good... good morning,” Peggy stammers, which is ridiculous. She spent three hours interrogating a French guy until she had got every single piece of information she needed, and now she can’t even talk to her own neighbour, who might also be her friend. “Sorry for waking you up.”

“’Is alright,” Angie says with a yawn. “I was about to get up anyway.”

“You have the early shift, then?”

“And the late one. And all the other ones as well. Or at least that’s what it feels like.”

Angie laughs and Peggy smiles tentatively. Her jaw still hurts from when the Frenchman’s goons punched her in the face and she hopes to God that the bruise won’t be too obvious under all the powder.

“So, what brings you here, Pegs?”

Angie keeps her smile but Peggy can see how she frowns ever so slightly. And why wouldn’t she? This isn’t like Peggy at all.

“I need your help,” Peggy says slowly and then Angie finally snaps wide awake.

“Jesus’ knackers, what happened to you?!” She tears open the door, staring at Peggy with huge, wide eyes. “Did somebody hit you?!”

Angie’s voice is getting shriller by the second. Peggy bites her lip and quickly glances up and down the hall but there is nobody in sight.

“Angie, calm down, it’s nothing...”

“Some bloke hit you and you say it’s nothing?!” She is screaming now, panic in her eyes and Peggy is so sorry for everything. “Pegs, what happened, are you hurt, what can we do, oh God, where is he, I am going to kill him...”

This is so not helpful and so Peggy lets go of her shoes and her lipstick, grabs Angie at the shoulders and starts shaking her.

“TEACUP!” she shouts. She probably woke up everyone from here to the first floor but at least it worked. Angie stares at her like Peggy lost her mind.

“What?” she asks, blinking slowly, but Peggy just grabs her shoes from the ground and shoves her way inside Angie’s flat, closing the door behind them. It’s dark and stuffy and smells like sleep, but also like the sweet perfume Angie loves so much.

There is a chair right across from the bed, and Peggy can feel her legs practically dragging her towards it, just to sit down for five minutes, five minutes of peace after the night she had.

But that won’t do.

She is supposed to be at work in some thirty minutes and she is here because she needs help.

“Teacup?”

Also, there is a terrified, very confused woman in front of her.

Peggy tries to smile again.

“I am sorry. We used to do this when the soldiers wouldn’t calm down after an attack,” she says, while she watches Angie pull her dressing gown closer around her body.

“You would yell ‘teacup’ in their faces?”

“Yes. Or ‘octopus’ or ‘maple syrup’. It needed to be something very absurd so they would concentrate on that. It helped to break them out of their panic.”

It might not be the best tactic, Peggy thinks as Angie continues to stare at her in utter confusion, to explain her weird behaviour with even weirder war stories. She really is not suited for civilian life.

Before she can embarrass herself any further, Angie huffs and finally steps fully into her own living room. “Well, I’m not a soldier”, she says, while turning on the lights. “And I think that I’m allowed a little panic when my gal shows up with a shiner as bright as the moon!”

“It’s not what it looks like”, Peggy hurries to say but Angie merely sighs and gives her the most tired look Peggy has ever seen.

“Is it ever”, Angie mumbles. With another sigh she turns and walks over to the kitchen counter. “Take a seat, Peg. You look dead on your feet.”

“Thank you, Angie.”

“I haven’t got any tea, though.”

“It’s... alright.”

Peggy sits down on the creaky old chair, feeling every second of the last thirty hours in her tired legs. Oh God, she will never be able to stand up again. Maybe she should have asked Jarvis to drop her off at the office instead but she didn’t even have a blouse on some two hours ago. Poor Jarvis would probably also have swerved the car into a brick wall if Peggy had tried to talk to him in her state of undress. At least he hadn’t fainted on the spot when she had asked him to help her out of the sewers, but he had gone considerably paler and had handed her not only his coat but also his jacket and he insisted on piling a blanket on her as well.

It had been cosy warm, if nothing else.

“…gy. Peggy!”

Peggy winces, looking up to see Angie standing in front of her with two mugs of coffee in her hands.

“You are really out of it, aren’t you.”

“Sorry, Angie.”

Angie rolls her eyes, puts the cup on the little table next to Peggy and wanders back to the counter again. She is restless and a little bit nervous of course, and Peggy wants to apologise all over again, but she feels like she will never be able to stop once she starts. So she sits in silence while Angie sips her coffee and probably waits for her to say something. Peggy does not really know where to start.

But Angie is good at keeping her silent, slightly disapproving stare and Peggy is running out of time. She has to be back at the office soon.

“Angie”, she says softly, ignoring how Angie scoffs and frowns. “I know what you must be thinking, but I promise it isn’t what it looks like.”

“Really? Well, tell me what it looks like, then,” Angie says and just like that she throws Peggy off track. It really wasn’t her night and it starts to look like it won’t be her day either.

“It… it probably looks like somebody hit me?” she says hesitantly. And it’s only then that Peggy realizes that Angie isn’t angry at her for the intrusion but worried out of her mind about a friend getting hurt. Before she can say anything further, Angie groans.

“Damn sure, it does! And you really want to tell me that that isn’t exactly what happened? Look, Peggy, I don’t know what’s going on but you won’t get any comfort from me. If your sweetheart hits you, dump him and be merry! I can’t remember how often I had to say that to some gal but…” Angie bites her lip and stares at Peggy with huge, sad eyes. She is shivering in her thin night dress and gown, refusing to look anywhere but at her own feet.

Peggy opens her mouth – and closes it again without saying anything. Lying just seems utterly pointless now. And very, so very unfair. But what else is there?

“It wasn’t my…sweetheart, Angie,” Peggy says, trying not to cringe at the word. “Nor anybody I know.”

“Oh? So random men on the street start punching you now?”

“It’s… it’s a work thing.”

“You work at a telephone company!” Angie screams. She sounds so desperate and hurt and Peggy has never felt more evil in her entire life.

 _I do not_ , she thinks and banishes the hysteria down her throat. _I work for a government agency where the guys don’t know what they are doing and I am committing treason practically every night._ She pushes her tongue at her aching teeth but she is unable to force the words past her lips. It just won’t do.

Instead she smiles as brightly and wickedly as she can.

“Please Angie. I am fine, really.” Peggy tries to think of something, anything that she can say to reassure Angie. Lying has never been so hard. “Yes, I got hit, but it isn’t so bad. I barely even feel it.”

“Hm.”

“And you should see the other guy.”

It’s a silly line, one she had heard countless times from Bucky, from Dum Dum and once even from Steve (with him, ‘the other guy’ was a tank, as she found out later), but it works its charm on Angie anyway.

She snorts, and hastily tries to rebuild her frown only to fail hard and burst into laughter. Peggy starts grinning despite the pain in her jaw and together they laugh until Angie is out of breath.

“You really are something, Peggy” she heaves after a while. “The other guy, now, really?”

“Yes” Peggy says and for the first time in days she can grin because she wants to.

Angie shakes her head and takes another sip from her coffee. “So you promise me that the other guy looks worse?”

Peggy thinks of the dead body in the sewers. “Yes, definitely. I would even say that I gave better than I got.”

Angie gives her a smile, a real one and Peggy feels relief flooding her brain.

“Right. So… why are you here then? You didn’t pull me out of bed just to brag about your brawls, right?”

Peggy grins and sighs as she picks up her lipstick. She makes sure to hold her hand directly into the light so Angie can see the faint tremor in her fingers. “It’s so silly but… I am just not steady enough today. Would you mind…?”

She could probably pick up a gun and still shoot three men dead, even with her aim off like this due to the fresh knife wound. Red lipstick absolutely does not allow for that margin of error though and the irony is not lost on Peggy. She keeps her smile to herself.

“You want me to paint your lips?”

“Yes.”

She thought about not putting any lipstick on, really, but it’s just not an option. Not in her profession, not with her colleagues, not with half the world out there ready to get her. She doesn’t want to make herself more vulnerable than she already is. Blood lips, bright smile, that is what keeps her going. It’s like her own personal shield and although she can’t put any of this into words, she hopes that Angie will understand her anyway.

Angie shrugs, walks over to Peggy and plucks the red lipstick right out of her hands.

“’Course I can.”

Peggy smiles. “Thank you.” She looks at Angie, her gaze following the blue and white fabric of the gown up to her bright smile and her shining eyes. “A thousand times.”

Angie laughs. “Shut your trap, or I’ll paint you like a clown.”

Carefully she lays her hand on the back of Peggy’s head and dips it down ever so slightly. Peggy closes her eyes, opening her mouth and then she feels the cool press of the lipstick tip against her lower lip. Angie moves gently, not applying too much, going slower at the edges until she has drawn a perfect circle.

Peggy can smell her perfume and hear how she breathes, slow and steady, while the fabric of her white gown rustles against Peggy’s heavy navy blue skirt. She could fall asleep like this, right here in this chair, with Angie beside her, her delicate fingers combing softly through her hair…

“Smack your lips” Angie says and she sounds a little bit breathless herself. “There is a mirror over there. If you don’t like it, don’t tell me though. I am no good with criticism.”

She steps away, taking the warmth with her that Peggy didn’t know she was missing until now.

“I am sure it looks fine, Angie” Peggy says, while she puts on her shoes. She would give everything to spend the whole day in bed and sleep off the terrible disaster that was the last week.

“Hey, Peggy?”

“Yes?”

“Promise me something? If… if you… I mean if the other guy doesn’t look worse than you one day, do you promise to let me help you?”

“You will paint him like a clown, too?”

Angie shrugs – and grins. “Sure. But maybe I won’t use lipstick for the red.”

Peggy laughs. She is still grinning when she finally tells Angie goodbye to go to work and she smiles the whole day long and whenever one of the men step out of line, she remembers that there is a fierce lady with red lipstick ready to avenge her.

The guys won’t know what hit them.


End file.
